


Interlude for Eight Straw Hats and One Giraffe

by Maldoror_Chant



Series: One Piece Interludes [2]
Category: One Piece
Genre: CP9 - Freeform, Gen, Humor, aka assassination and other dubious things, fishmen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-05
Updated: 2017-11-05
Packaged: 2019-01-29 14:59:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12633474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maldoror_Chant/pseuds/Maldoror_Chant
Summary: 'Bad luck' is drawing a spade for a flush that needed a club. It's quite different from 'massive, horrible, the-heavens-hate-me bad luck' which involves a bunch of insanely strong pirates, who have already beaten him once, landing on the island where a beleaguered agent is currently conducting legitimate CP9 business by himself.





	Interlude for Eight Straw Hats and One Giraffe

'Bad luck' is drawing a spade when your flush needed a club. It's quite different from 'massive, horrible, the-heavens-hate-me bad luck' which involves a bunch of insanely strong pirates who have already beaten you once landing on the island where you are currently conducting legitimate CP9 business by yourself.

Kaku realized early on that he'd just had a stroke of massive, horrible, the-heavens-hate-me bad luck when he spotted the Thousand Sunny on his initial reconnaissance. Darn, so much for a quiet uneventful assassination.

After a minute of mandatory cursing, he started to consider ways this could be turned to his advantage. Fact one: the Straw Hats were here, that much was certain; he couldn't see any of those wanted poster profiles from where he was skulking in the shadows of the harbor, but no other ship on the Grand Line had that goofy figurehead, and Kaku couldn't think of anybody around here with the power or the guts to take it from its owners. Fact two: they weren't on friendly terms with the fishmen pirates; this could be deduced from the dozen recumbent forms laid out on the docks like mackerel on a fishmonger's stall. Kaku didn't spend any time wondering what the fishmen had done to the Straw Hats or vice versa. The reason why two pirate gangs had decided to beat each other up wasn't something he cared enough about to uncover.

CP9 agents prioritized strategy over brute force, and they had no consideration whatsoever for personal glory. In view of his orders, it didn't matter if Kaku eliminated the targets personally or if they fell to the natural disaster that was the Straw Hats so long as said targets were dead and buried on the bottom line. Seen in that light, Luffy's presence here might be a positive development, Kaku told himself (and didn't sound very convincing even to his own ears). His best move was to wait until the Straw Hats and fishmen mutually destroyed each other, and then he could pick off the survivors. Right. All he had to do was remain carefully out of sight in the meantime, since both pirate parties would probably put their differences aside to beat up a government agent if given the opportunity. And wouldn't that be special.

Just when Kaku was getting set to sneak around like the covert operator he was and see what stage the fight was at, panicked screams to his left made him tense. A second later a couple of Straw Hats burst out of a nearby tunnel and ran straight toward him, hotly pursued by a large fishman. 

And that's where the massive, horrible, the-heavens-hate-me bad luck turned into a massive, horrible, I'm-going-to-hate-myself-later bad decision.

For Kaku did not follow his half-formulated strategy of hiding and waiting until the two parties fought it out. He did not hide at all. Maybe it was because the fishman was Gorgor the Brute, the third name on Kaku's list of targets. Perhaps it was because the two Straw Hats were Nami the Cat Burglar and the ship's pet, the two weakest according to their bounties, not much of a challenge for a notorious killer like Gorgor. Or it was just possible that Kaku, who was always a little caught between his cold, calculating job as an assassin and his natural tendencies towards fair play - it made the fights more fun - just did not have the immediate reflex of waiting until Gorgor butchered a young girl and a fuzzy little deer for whatever microscopic advantage that would present the agent afterwards. 

The pet ran straight past him, but the girl saw Kaku standing there and screeched to a halt - putting her right in the downward-sweeping path of Gorgor's meat cleaver, a wicked implement almost as big as she was.

"Duck," Kaku advised, drawing without waiting to see if she would follow his suggestion. 

The dame was quick, he'd give her that. So were Kaku's swords as they whistled through the spot where her head had been an eye-blink beforehand. Gorgor looked briefly surprised before the two strikes caught him in the chest and sent him flying in a spray of blood, limbs and flippers. 

It'd been smart to eliminate Gorgor while he was distracted by a couple of harmless opponents, making him easy pickings; or so Kaku told himself, a pale attempt to justify his split second decision after the fact. It wasn't as if it truly mattered that he'd accidentally saved the lives of a couple of the weaker Straw Hats, and it wasn't as if they could impede him-

On which thought, the little deer glued himself to the back of Kaku's head with a happy cry of "Zoro! You saved us!"

Kaku was too amazed to even react. If it had been an attack in any shape or form, his trigger-instincts would have made venison out of his opponent before his brain had even engaged, but this was not an attack, it was, to use the only term that seemed appropriate, a hug. And now the top of his head was being clutched and, from the feel of it, nuzzled. Kaku twitched, trying to figure out how he was supposed to react to this and get the animal off when it was in Kaku's blind spot and felt stuck on by vacuum suction.

The girl picked herself up and had her weapon a foot away from Kaku's nose an instant later. "Chopper! Get away from him! That's not Zoro!"

Finely observed, lady.

"What?" came a squeak from above Kaku's left ear. "But he's dressed the same- and swords- and cutting-" and then a gulp.

"Hey. Critter," Kaku said, turning his head - a pointless maneuver as it just rotated his burden along with it, "you have three seconds to let go-" 

It took only two. The deer detached himself from Kaku's head, landed between the CP9 agent and his teammate, and turned into a gorilla. Kaku managed to keep the professionally neutral look on his face, but it was a close call. He should have remembered that as a group, the Straw Hats moved fast and always in the least expected direction. Sometimes even the impossible one if they could swing it.

The two parties considered each other. The...furry thing didn't turn into anything else, the girl looked at the agent intently and Kaku looked back with the feeling he should be saying something appropriate to the circumstances, but he was damned if he knew what that was. 

Nothing, Kaku reminded himself grimly. Nothing was all that a World Government agent had to say to pirates. These people were criminals. He'd only saved their lives by accident. They were just lucky they were both too smalltime for him to bother with. He had better things to do and strict orders to follow, so he was just going to walk away. 

Kaku proceeded to do so, heading towards the mouth of the tunnel and ignoring the two. He ignored their stunned whispers behind his back, and he even managed to ignore the gorilla turning into a raccoon, though that took some effort of his concentration.

"I'm so sorry, Nami, but it all went so fast with the swords and the slicing and he's dressed the same as Zoro so I thought-"

"He's not," the girl hissed. "Zoro is wearing a black Galley-la t-shirt, haramaki and bandana, and this guy is wearing a creepy black top, no haramaki and a baseball cap. You _boys_ just don't get details when it comes to clothing, do you. It's a good thing I'm here. Hey you, hold up."

Kaku paused, surprised that the twit would actually try to talk to him rather than count herself lucky he was going away without addressing the matter of their arrest warrants. Maybe she wanted to thank him. The Straw Hats did have this strange sense of chivalry, though Kaku really didn't want thanks and was actively trying to forget they'd even been there.

"I'm surprised to see you here, mister CP9. We thought you'd been killed in the Buster Call after Zoro kicked your ass."

So much for thanking him. Kaku turned and trudged on. Orders. 

"But you're not after us today, are you." It wasn't a question. And the reckless chit was _following_ him. "You'd not have hesitated to let him kill me otherwise. You're after the fishmen. Starting with that one." 

He remembered this girl from Water 7. He remembered thinking that she was remarkably more astute than her captain, though on reflection that really wasn't saying much. 

"I know where the other two are."

At that Kaku finally stopped in his tracks. That she'd guessed he was after the fishmen wasn't that big a deduction, but that she knew who was on his highly secret list of targets-...Getting rid of pirates was not CP9's usual mandate. But the fall of Jimbei following the passage of Hurricane Straw Hat had shaken up the entire power structure of the merman and fishman communities. Spandam's 'connections' were afraid that this gang of powerful fishmen pirates, who'd occasionally done their dirty work, might get uppity and decide to try their hand at blackmail. So Kaku's orders were to clean up loose ends in utmost secrecy, and having this pirate girl prattle about it wasn't what 'utmost secrecy' was all about.

"What do you know about that?" Kaku asked with an air of menace that impressed the redhead not at all. She merely shrugged.

"It’s obvious someone like you wouldn't care for the small fry, but at the least you'll be after Hadock the Cuda and Fiddles, his first mate. Without them, the others are harmless. But you'll never find those two by yourself. They're hidden in those caverns, and the tunnels to get there riddle the whole island."

Kaku bristled. "I can find my way through-"

"Not without my navigating skills, you can't," he was tartly informed. "Not before Hadock is punted off this island by Luffy, at which point all the other fishmen will run for it and you'll lose your chance at getting Fiddles and any others on your list."

Kaku really, truly, utterly hated to admit it, but she might have a point.

"Are you saying you'll help me find them? Why?"

"Because I have such a deep and abiding love for these twerps," the girl said with an exasperated roll of her eyes. "Why do you think? I want to help my crew, but these fishmen are strong. So I'll just lead you to them and stay hidden while my enemies fight it out." A solid strategy that sounded faintly familiar. 

Kaku was starting to get a bad feeling about this. But Fiddles knew as much about the fishmen's underhand deals as his captain did, it was crucial not to let him escape. And though Luffy would have no problem defeating Hadock, the Straw Hat had this reputation of never killing an opponent. That would leave Kaku's job unfinished. 

"Come _on_ ," the navigator said, already at the entrance of the cave with the deer-raccoon looking up at her dubiously. "You're not very fast on the uptake, are you."

Kaku gritted his teeth, fingers gripping the hilts of his swords, but perforce followed, at which point the massive, horrible, I'm-going-to-hate-myself-later bad decision became an even worse one.

 

They found Fiddles the Sea Bass after fifteen minutes and half a dozen sliced-and-diced fishmen. The girl had been telling the truth: she did know the location of Kaku's targets, and he'd never have found them in that maze of natural sea-dug tunnels by himself. 

Kaku took a moment to analyze the situation unfolding in the large, underground chamber. Fiddles was badly scorched, and also peppered in what looked like raw eggs, sulfur and sauce. He was running around in a wide circle, galloping over rock, splashing through shallow seawater pools, weaving around stalagmites, swearing like a drunken sailor and following a long-nosed blur running before him with a sustained "Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!" 

"Oh good, Usopp's still keeping that fishman busy!" the little deer exclaimed. "I was worried."

This mission was getting surreal, but Kaku grimly ignored the dazed 'what the _hell_ am I doing' feeling that was trying to creep up on him. He let the blur that was the Straw Hat sniper pass him by and stepped out of the tunnel to intercept Fiddles. The fishman was running too fast to stop, which made the hit as easy as whipping up a plate of sashimi. 

Kaku pulled his sword free and looked up. The Straw Hat hadn't noticed his pursuer's fall; he'd continued to run around the circumference of the underground chamber and was approaching Kaku once more. The sniper screeched to a halt a few feet away, took one amazed look at Fiddles, another amazed look at Kaku, spun around and went running in the opposite direction with a "Aaaaaashiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit!"

What looked like a boomerang whistled past Kaku's shoulder, took the sniper in the head with a pleasing _clang_ and curved back to the navigator's hand. 

"Get a grip, Usopp," Nami snapped, fitting her stick back together again. "We have to go find Hadock. Now! It took us too long to shake Gorgor, it's been twenty minutes already."

The sniper was laminated against the rock wall by the combination of his speed and the boomerang upsetting his circular trajectory. He unglued enough of his face to look around and stutter "B-b-but that g-g-guy is-"

"He's helping us. Now come on!" the redhead ordered, trotting off towards the cavern's furthest exit.

Kaku looked up sharply. "I am not helping you lot, I'm just here to-"

"Oh I forgot, thanks for helping me with Gorgor earlier!" 

"You're welc-uh? Hey, don't get any ideas, lady. That was just an accident, you were in my way, I had no intention of-" but nobody was listening. That was irritating. They were all up ahead now, even the sniper who was visibly warier of his navigator's temper than of the CP9 agent, and that was irritating too. But Kaku had no other choice but to follow.

 

 

Captain Hadock turned his ugly face towards them and focused on the four humans through small eyes buried in flesh. "What is this? Yet more of you Straw Hats come to confront me?"

"I am not a Straw Hat," Kaku said at the same time Usopp snapped, "He is _not_ a Straw Hat!" and Chopper said, "Oh no, he's just helping us."

"I am not helping you, either." Kaku drew his swords with a short, sharp gesture. 

"Okay, CP9 guy, you go ahead and beat him up for us!" Nami exclaimed, darting off to one side. 

"I am not beating him up _for you_ -" and then Kaku had to parry a huge swipe from Hadock's gigantic harpoon.

"You fool! You're too late! Your captain will be dead in a minute, and your two other friends will follow!"

"He is _not_ my capt-...wait a minute, what did you say?!"

There was a noisy crackle behind Hadock, followed by the sound of something shorting out violently. The fishman turned with a bellow and Kaku looked past him. Nami had slipped around them both and had used her stick to do something explosive and electric to a mechanism behind the fishman.

"No!" Hadock shouted. "The motor sealing the seastone cage door! Now he's free! The water was just about to rise high enough to finally drown your captain and those two interfering bastards fighting off the sea-king! You witch!"

"Now now, there's no need to use that language," Nami chided. "He's all yours again, long-nose CP9 guy."

Kaku made a gurgling sound at the back of his throat- but she'd effectively redirected Hadock's attention to him. The barracuda fishman wasn't all that bright.

"You! You ruined my clever plan, you damned long-nosed Straw Hat! You'll die slowly and painfully for that!"

"You are so very, very right," Kaku mumbled. "At least about the slow and painful part." He didn't think Lucci would actually kill him for rescuing their worst enemy, but he wasn't going to be terribly pleased about it either. 

Hadock seemed to hesitate between figuring out what Kaku was talking about and just whaling into him. Predictably he went for the easier solution and swung down with his massive harpoon, a blow that would have ground rock to powder.

There was a terminal _clash_...followed by a dangerous, ringing silence.

Kaku held the blow with his sword without a flinch. Then a jerk of his blade sent the harpoon scything through the air to embed itself into the furthest wall. A touch of awareness finally flickered in Hadock's tiny eyes. Too late, though. Two massive rankyaku, fueled by legitimate annoyance, hammered him into the wall right next to his harpoon. 

Hadock blinked groggily- then stiffened as Kaku put his foot on the fishman's throat and his sword point near the creature's right eye.

"I just want to ask you one question before I kill you," Kaku said conversationally. "Did I get your overblown exposition right earlier? Did you manage to trap Monkey D Luffy in a seastone cage?"

"Yeah," the fishman growled defiantly.

"In a cavern slowly filling with water?"

"Yeah!"

"With a sea-king ready to attack as soon as the level was high enough?"

"Yeah! He should have been dead in twenty minutes, but your blonde crewmate held your captain's head up out of the water through the top of the cage, and the swordsman was fighting off the sea-king, and then just when it was about to be all over anyway, that human female managed to open the cage's door- ow!"

Kaku put his foot back down on Hadock's throat after kicking him in the head. "I wasn't finished. My question is, once you caught Luffy in that cage, didn't it occur to you to _kill him right away instead of messing around with water levels and a really big fish?!_ "

Hadock gave him a fried halibut look as the echoes of Kaku's sudden outburst pummeled the depths of the cavern. "Uh...whose side are you on?"

"Right." Kaku lifted his swords. "Now I am going to kill you with a certain pleasure and then see if I can reverse the failure of your stupid execution method-"

"FISH-GUY!"

"Or not," Kaku concluded with a defeated sigh.

Hadock roared and tore himself away from Kaku to face his rubbery challenger head on. Kaku resignedly took a step aside - quite a few steps, this was bound to be destructive. 

He stared helplessly at the rambunctious fight for a moment and then shot an ugly look over his shoulder. The little witch had the audacity to stand there and stick her tongue out at him with a wide wink. She could afford to do so because she had the ship's cook - the one who'd walked all over Jyabura, literally, even leaving footprints across the wolf Zoan to prove it - kneeling at her feet, swearing eternal devotion to her intelligence and beauty. There was also Zoro, dripping wet, standing right behind Kaku and tapping one of his swords gently against his palm. 'I understand from Nami that you helped us,' the sword said via a few telegraphic taps. 'That means we owe you one', the sword added. 'As such, we'll let you go without bringing up old enmities,' the sword concluded, 'but I have to tell you that if you're thinking of harassing any of my nakama, you'll _really_ be pushing your luck'. Kaku had a distinct memory of how well Zoro could communicate via forged metal; he had a souvenir engraved across his chest, half a dozen forget-me-nots.

Just to make his strategic position even more ludicrously impossible, from another tunnel came a cry of "Strong Right!" followed by a lot of thumping, and then Nico Robin and Franky burst into the cavern.

"Hi guys! You all okay? We're Super! Aow! We dismantled that mother of all cannons and freed the hostages from the village and- holy shit what is he doing here?!"

"It's okay," Nami declared with a wicked grin, "he helped us. Right, CP9 guy? Thanks, by the way."

Kaku pulled his cap way down and muttered something about _not_ helping them, damn it.

"You helped us? That's great! Who are you?"

Kaku spun around. Luffy was standing right behind him. His arms were stretched out over half the length of the huge cavern, looped twice around a pillar and tangled around Hadock. Hadock was growling and running on the spot trying to get to Luffy without realizing this was pulling the stretched arms fast against the pillar. A state of affairs that had come about almost certainly by luck rather than by design. Hadock was nowhere near the Straw Hat's level as far as combat abilities went. Luffy had defeated Lucci, after all, and Hadock was several notches beneath the CP9 team-leader, and beneath Kaku as well. But mentally, Kaku decided, these two pirates were about on par.

"It's that CP9 agent, Luffy, the one from Water 7 and Enies Lobby," said Robin with complete serenity.

"Hey that's right! You're Pigeon Guy's friend. The one who jumps off buildings and turns into a giraffe and who fought us at Enies Lobby."

Kaku got ready to dodge, though he thought Luffy had his hands rather full of Hadock at the moment. Unfortunately that left all the others. He'd have his chances with any of them individually - even Zoro, now that he knew what he was facing - but all of them at once? Not a hope in hell. He'd have to Soru to the exit before they all fell upon him-

"And you helped us? That's so cool! These fishmen are fun to fight, right?"

Kaku stared at the bright grin. If there was any kind of question or suspicion in that rubber brain, it wasn't obvious.

"Oh, say, I just had a thought. Since you helped Nami and beat up this guy, do you want to-"

"LUFFY!" the other Straw Hat hollered, making Kaku jump, "don't you dare invite him to join the crew!"

"- be the one to send him flying? You started the fight, so it'd only be fair-" he was interrupted by a vicious tug from Hadock, who managed to move forward all of three feet towards his target. The pillar was cracking, a few seconds away from flying apart in a volley of dust and rubble, a fact to which Luffy seemed oblivious.

Kaku looked around; at the smirking witch who seemed to have no fear of the forces she'd gambled with; at the sniper making menacing gestures at him from thirty feet away where he was hiding behind a fallen pillar; at the cook who was now drooling over an amused Robin's beauty and cannon-destroying abilities; at Franky who'd struck an odd pose for no reason Kaku could discern...Zoro was the only one who seemed to follow what was going through Kaku's mind at this point, but considering they'd fought to the death not two months prior, it made the faintly understanding look almost as insanely out of place as the small deer glued to the back of Zoro's leg looking up at Kaku suspiciously. 

It didn't take a master of strategy to figure out what his next move was going to be. "I'm leaving," said Kaku, turning towards the exit. 

"Right now?" Luffy sounded disappointed. His arms were twanging like harps strings. "You sure? Why?"

"It might be contagious," Kaku grumbled as he trudged out of the large room. 

His steps rang through the sea-carved tunnels, drowning out a soft mutter.

"-so you see, Lucci, it's not like I had a _choice_. I had to follow directives, and my orders were to get the fishmen gang. Yes, I know there are standing orders concerning the Straw Hats too, but it was only a um, a helpless - grnnnbloodywitch- a helpless girl and a- a-...I didn't _know_ Luffy was in that cage, of course I'd never have let them free him-...um...Say, Lucci, a funny thing happened on my last mission! Yes, sure, Kaku, just defuse the situation with a little humor, like that you can _die laughing_. Idiot. Okay. Okay...Lucci, I know you're going to be cross when you read this, but you have to understand, I was outnumbered and outgunned, and I had to stay alive to complete the mission. Luffy was only ever going to beat Hadock senseless. Somebody had to go back and turn the Cuda into fish fillets once the Straw Hats had left. Who else would have done that if I'd gotten myself needlessly killed? Besides, if someone were to eliminate Monkey D Luffy, I'm sure you'd rather it be you, so I was doing you a- a favor. Right, a favor. Bloody hell...I wonder what the penalty is for falsifying a mission report..."


End file.
